


The Thrill is Gone

by facetofcathy



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 100-1000 Words, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-06
Updated: 2009-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 04:13:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney underestimates himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thrill is Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at LiveJournal's McSmooch.

"I guess we'll never get to have hate sex," Rodney said.

"What, ah– What?" John asked, and okay, had they been drugged before they'd been tossed in the cell, and he'd just not noticed?

"I suppose," Rodney continued in the same musing tone, "if we'd gotten together back in the first few months on Atlantis, well, then I could see it happening, but now... I'm too used to your plethora of minor annoyances, and you have to have built up an immunity to me by now, so I guess it won't ever happen."

"McKay," John said very slowly and carefully, "we aren't together now."

"Well not if you look at it from a linear timeline perspective, but I mean really the inevitability is patently obvious, so if you look at time in a more nonlinear way, then, yes, yes we are together. In effect we always have been and always will be; we just won't get to have hate sex. That would require actual time travel." Rodney looked over at John, like he expected the usual congratulations on his superior reasoning skills. He didn't look drugged; he just looked smug.

"This is a prison cell," John said, "not the TARDIS," and he shouldn't have said that; he was supposed to be pretending they weren't in a prison cell, sitting on dirty straw pallets, and that he wasn't pissed off and that it couldn't have all easily been avoided if Rodney had just shut up when he'd told him to and–.

"You know, not all the science in that show is completely out to lunch, but that's not the point. The point is that you and I are too comfortable with each other now. It's too easy; the passion's just not there, and for real hate sex, you need passion."

"Look, McKay," John said, and he could hear the tightness in his voice; he knew he was getting worked up, letting Rodney get to him, and shit, did he understand how their jailers felt. "We are going to be here in this cell—together—for as long as it takes Woolsey to talk us out of here, and–"

"Or Ronon to shoot us out," Rodney said.

"Right," John ground out, "or that. So how be you pretend to be sane, and I'll pretend I don't want to strangle you."

"But that's just my point; you don't want to strangle me, because you're way too used to me."

"_Rodney_."

"Well, you don't, right? My point is–"

"If you tell me what your god damned point is one more time," John took a deep breath and levered himself to his feet to loom over Rodney in the three feet of space in the centre of the room. "_My_ point is, you got us in this damn mess—again—with your damn mouth—again, and I am really not interested in your wacky nonlinear time theories."

Rodney scrambled to his feet and faced off with John, and he did what he always did and made up the inches with volume. Volume and a sneer. "My point," Rodney practically shouted, and John got his fists full of leather and shoved, "which you really should have grasped by now," but Rodney just kept waving his hands around, pulling strings and pushing buttons, "is not just about nonlinear time," and John hadn't actually let go of his jacket, "it is also," so he yanked him back, "about inevi–"

John stopped him.

He pulled off, eventually, to breathe, to ask himself what the hell he was doing, to try to get himself under control, and to say, "Inevitability—yeah, I get that."

They stared at each other, flushed and panting, and Rodney said, "So, we can have hate sex then?"

John swept Rodney's feet out from under him, in a move that he really should have seen coming, and then followed him down. The straw wasn't so bad with a little extra cushioning to land on. "Let's just hope Woolsey talks slow," John said.


End file.
